Maximizing the Minimal

Way back in 191 3, an unwary art critic covered himself with retrospective ignominy by mocking Dadaist Marcel Duchamp's cubistic Nude Descending a Staircase as looking more like "an explosion in a shingle factory." There is no such danger today awaiting critics of Minimal Sculptor Robert Morris --even though some of his work does indeed look like an explosion in some sort of factory--because Morris' untitled pieces are not intended to represent anything. "What you see is what there is," says Morris. Since 1962, Morris watchers have seen him exhibit an 8-ft.-square slab of painted plywood, a tangled knot of rope, a pile of dirt, and himself, nude but covered with mineral oil, moving slowly across a stage while clasped in the arms of a lovely female dancer. Not everyone agrees about the value of these displays. But they have won 39-year-old Morris recent retrospectives at Washington's Corcoran Gallery and the Detroit Institute of Arts. And last week New York's Whitney Museum presented six new pieces, including Morris' biggest indoor sculpture to date.

Public Process. Materials for the new sculptures included eleven huge concrete blocks weighing as much as 1,500 lbs. apiece, 15 two-in.-thick steel plates weighing between 2,400 lbs. and 4,000 lbs. each and 80 unwieldy wooden beams of the type that carried traffic on Manhattan's Sixth Avenue during recent subway construction. To make room, the Whitney cleared away all the partitions in its 108-ft.-long third-floor gallery. As workmen moved in with gantries, forklifts and hydraulic jacks to help Morris do his thing, the museum took on the look of a midtown Manhattan construction site.

There were even sidewalk superintendents--interested museumgoers who were invited to watch the artist at work. "We've dispensed with a formal opening so people can see how such large-scale sculpture gets here in the first place," says Marcia Tucker, the Associate Curator who organized the show. "Morris is dealing with ways of perceiving that are native to us all, with the feeling of gravity pulling things down, with the sense of size and weight, with things that fall and collapse. This way the public can take part in the process."

Massive Stacks. The installation had its spectacular moments. For his biggest piece, Morris set up a 96-ft.-long framework of steel pipes and heavy wooden beams, then with a tall, spindly gantry dropped concrete blocks at intervals along it, creating a series of floor-shaking crashes. The end result somewhat resembles a gigantic line-up of jackstraws and dominoes or an oversized split-rail fence weighed down with paving stones. Four days later the second biggest piece was ready for similar finishing touches. Because of the fear of falling timbers, the public was excluded, but the Whitney's third floor was alive with press photographers, television cameramen and reporters. Unfortunately, the operation was a dud. Two massive stacks of 26-ft. subway construction beams were supposed to spread out fanwise when jacked up and tipped over on the floor. But they proved too heavy to do more than topple a little, and the job of spreading them had to be done by workmen with crowbars. "It doesn't look like the model," said Morris meditatively when the workmen were through, "but it's all right." Whatever one thought about that, one thing at least seemed clear: if less is more, as some aestheticians claim, Minimalist Morris is the most.

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